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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Stupid Names

One of the joys of working in medicine or any other field in which you see many peoples' names, is the opportunity to see truly stupid names people inflict upon their children. For years I thought that the winner was the two separate women my wife found when working for the state Tax Commission named Aquaneta. But we have a new winner. This is, sadly, third hand so it is beginning to rise to the level of urban legend.

One of our fine CRNA's at work tells the story from his days in anesthesia school. It seems that one of his colleagues had child patient. Paperwork had his name as "Liam". No problem, Lee-Um, nice Irish name. Anesthesia student goes into room and starts the usual routine, "What is little Lee-Um having done today?" Cold response from mother "His name is "Yum". "Oh, I'm sorry, we have his name as Liam." "It's pronounced Yum." I'm going to interject here that this family was white. I only mention this because some of the transliteration schemes for Asian and African languages can lead to surprising pronunciations. That's not in play here. Back to the story. Stunned silence. "OK, I'm just curious, how do get "Yum" out of L-I-A-M?" "He's named after his father......William."